Alternative Universities as Sites of Creativity

Artists from the Bruce High Quality Foundation University (BHQFU) and Vincent Katz, a professor of art at Yale University, will give talks on alternative universities as sites of creativity on Wednesday, April 20, at Grinnell College.

The free and public talks will take place at 7:30 p.m. Joe Rosenfield ’25 Center, Room 101.

Earlier that day, the founders of BHQFU will hold a workshop, “B.Y.O.U.: Build Your Own University,” in the Masonic Temple downtown, 928 Main St., Grinnell. The workshop on teaching and learning will take place from 1-3 p.m. It is free and open to the public.

The founders of BHQFU will “How to Die an Artist: Resistance and Futility.” BHQFU, founded in 2009, is New York’s Freest Art School. It provides tuition-free classes, residencies, workshops, exhibitions and public programs to a community of thousands of New Yorkers. The school is an alternative to contemporary art schools that emphasize professionalization.

A professor at the Yale University of Art, Katz will discuss “Black Mountain College: Finding the Center in the Remote.” His lecture will cover the pedagogy of Black Mountain College in terms of its location and locus, especially as related to the college’s later years. He also will discuss Black Mountain’s relevance today, as a model, and also consider parallels to modern, remotely-operated web-based experience of culture.

Katz is a celebrated poet, critic, translator, editor and curator. His criticism has been published in numerous books, catalogs, and journals, including in Apollo, Art in America, ARTnews and Art on Paper, among others. He is also the author of The Complete Elegies Of Sextus Propertius, winner of the National Translation Award in 2005.  

He has curated several celebrated exhibitions, including an exhibition on Black Mountain College for the Reina Sofia museum in Madrid, and Street Dance: The New York Photographs of Rudy Burckhardt for the Museum of the City of New York.

The Center for Humanities is sponsoring these events as part of this year's theme: Sites of Creativity: Streets, Salons, Studios, and Schools.